Page 29 - women-in-love

SHOULD I know they are there?’
‘Why indeed, why indeed!’ said Mrs Crich, in her low,
tense voice. ‘Except that they ARE there. I don’t know peo-
ple whom I find in the house. The children introduce them
to me—‘Mother, this is Mr So-and-so.’ I am no further.
What has Mr So-and-so to do with his own name?—and
what have I to do with either him or his name?’
She looked up at Birkin. She startled him. He was flat-
tered too that she came to talk to him, for she took hardly
any notice of anybody. He looked down at her tense clear
face, with its heavy features, but he was afraid to look into
her heavy-seeing blue eyes. He noticed instead how her hair
looped in slack, slovenly strands over her rather beautiful
ears, which were not quite clean. Neither was her neck per-
fectly clean. Even in that he seemed to belong to her, rather
than to the rest of the company; though, he thought to him-
self, he was always well washed, at any rate at the neck and
ears.
He smiled faintly, thinking these things. Yet he was
tense, feeling that he and the elderly, estranged woman were
conferring together like traitors, like enemies within the
camp of the other people. He resembled a deer, that throws
one ear back upon the trail behind, and one ear forward, to
know what is ahead.
‘People don’t really matter,’ he said, rather unwilling to
continue.
The mother looked up at him with sudden, dark interro-
gation, as if doubting his sincerity.
‘How do you mean, MATTER?’ she asked sharply.

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